I discovered that I had an HDR plug-in this weekend that had been hidden to me. This is my first image, made up from a set of 5 shots. I had some issues with chromatic aberration but I'm pretty happy with my first attempt.

There were 5 shots merged together ranging from overexposed to underexposed, which kind of evened things out in the end result. I did a bit more tweaking and finished off in LR.

I have to admit to going a little crazy with the software when I first made the discovery - like a kid in a sweet shop! It is very easy to go over the top, but I felt that a great tree like that didn't need to be overdone.

Quite nicely done, as Bjorn mentioned, it isn't too common nowadays to see a natural-looking HDR. IMO, this is the job that HDR is meant to do, to get a nice, natural looking image with more detail as opposed to a single-exposure image. Though there are some overdone HDRs that have their own style and that look amazing.

GTI, the software is one of the Nik plug-ins, HDR Efex Pro 2, which came with the Nik package going as part of a deal earlier this year. You can go as crazy as you want with it - or not. This lake photo was my second attempt with it, using 3 shots this time:

This one was done using 3 shots. I’d taken several shots of this scene at different exposures to try to get an even balance between water and sky. Even with a circular polariser, it was difficult to get the balance, so my intention was to try layers in Pixelmator to bring the detail out in both sky and the lake. However, with my HDR plug-in discovery, it made the process even easier.

That second image is already a little out of my comfort zone when it comes to HDR. The sky looks overly dramatic IMO, and while I like the detail in the trees, the area on the right (near the caravan or whatever that brown thing is) has too many shades of green for me to accept this as a nice understated HDR. Then again, I'm probably too much of a purist when it comes to processing, so I'd be happy to read what others think.

Thank you Bjorn, robbon44 and 4xxxx. I appreciate all thoughts good or not so good and realise that HDR is not to everyone's taste, but that's what makes photography so diverse - it's not just about 'taking a picture'. I'm still learning and still in the early stages of that process really, considering the talent that we see on here, and I'm enjoying using every tool that comes my way. I've yet to find my own style and niche. But all things being said, I do like what HDR can do, though some of it is not to my taste either.

Bjorn, the greens around the caravan (yes it is a caravan - good spot , which is on an island and you can hire it to camp in) are really true to form. The only work I did there, other than what HDR Efex did, was to lighten the shadows. The shot below is a close up of said caravan - no HDR treatment on this one. The lake did have a green tinge to it on an overcast day. When the sun came out, it was kind of brown.

With the clouds, I gave them some clarity, but they were really dramatic on the day, which drew me to take the photograph. They seemed to promise worse to come, but within a couple of hours it was blue sky and sunshine. Mother Nature can be dramatic, and trying to photograph it is the hard part. I guess it's difficult sometimes to tell what's true when looking at a photo. Also, how I saw something would be different to how someone else saw it, so their interpretation of a scene would be different to mine.

When I started out, I felt that any kind of PP was like cheating - why would I want to erase something out that that was there, brighten up or darken an area, etc...? But then, what is it we're trying to create? Even great artists going back in history were known to add drama to their landscapes? I've come to enjoy the PP process and see it as another art form in itself, which can help to make a straight forward shot into a great shot. So with the lake shot I used images exposed for the sky and images exposed for the water with the help of a circular polariser for each, and used the HDR software to bring both parts of the scene together.

Quite a nice shot, and as Bjorn said, the sky is pretty dramatic, but I like it myself, I think it's still quite interesting what you can get with HDR. I do think, though, that the greens are a bit overpowering, they look a bit too "Amazon Rainforest" to me.

Savlet wrote:

I appreciate all thoughts good or not so good and realise that HDR is not to everyone's taste, but that's what makes photography so diverse - it's not just about 'taking a picture'.

I agree completely, that's why I find HDR shots to be pretty interesting. Nice work